Category Archives: Book Openers

Book Reviews

Book Openers: Georgetown Professor John Esposito on the Future of Islam

Georgetown professor John L. Esposito was working on a book about the future of Islam — pre-9/11. He promptly put it aside in favor of more immediate topics. And now, nearly a decade later, he returns to his subject with the publication of “The Future of Islam.”

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God’s Big Blog: I’m Convinced — Doubt Is Good

No doubt about it. After opening up the short, sweet and succint In Praise of Doubt by sociologists Peter Berger and Anton Zijderveld, I’m feeling really good about my doubter status.

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Book Openers: A Progressive Protestant Reclaims Christianity

I know way too many people whose impression of Christianity has been shaped either by media accounts of the (noisy) Religious Right or by books written the (equally noisy) New Atheists. Open James A. Forbes Jr.’s new book, Whose Gospel? for a brisk tour of the progressive Christian take on sexuality, gender, race, justice and war.

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Book Openers: Haiti’s History — and the American Civil War

A timely offering from the University of Pennsylvania Press:
Toussaint Louverture and the American Civil War: The Promise and Peril of a Second Haitian Revolution, by Matthew J. Clavin, University of Pennsylvania Press, 248 pages,  illus. , cloth, 2009, $39.95.

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The Writing Room: Different From, Different Than - Which Is It?

I was at the gym working on my pecs and abdominals the other day when I spotted a flyer announcing, “Belly fat is different than other fat.” Should that be different from? What’s the correct English usage here anyway? I hadn’t a clue.

Different than?

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